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To: William Grady who wrote (363)	7/9/1998 4:45:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1138

Bill, Your numbers are probably close. Last time I looked I thought the Book Value was slightly over $13. BRKS did a secondary last year which left them with the $6.50 of cash/share. While it would be nice to add Cash to Book Value, that's known as double counting. Basing an investment decision on that move is likely to be dangerous to your wealth. Otherwise, I agree with your view on BRKS. It's a bargain. but it will probably take some indication that the trough of this cycle is behind us before BRKS moves up substantially. FWIW, Ian.

To: William Grady who wrote (363)	7/9/1998 4:54:00 PM
From: kinkblot	Respond to of 1138

William, Your numbers look OK to me, consistent with the Q2 balance sheet. With the shares at a $1.40 discount to book value (cash included), the market is factoring in additional losses or writedowns of ~$14M before any upturn. We'll just have to see how well BRKS manages their costs and gauges demand; the current assessment seems to be that they've underestimated the extent of the downturn. The most specific forward-looking statement from the latest earnings release was: "...based upon current visibility, revenues in the second half of fiscal 1998 could be flat as compared with the first half." That would be about $45M. However, that estimate was made almost three months ago and business conditions may have weakened further. Backlog dropped from $48.0M to $45.2M between the December and March quarters. Since backlog is running at about two quarters revenue, management may not be too far off with their 2nd half projections. But if backlog continues to fall, they may need to readjust for an even lower level of business going into the next fiscal year. WT